


Fate (Up Against Your Will)

by blondsak



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Peter Parker, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt Peter Parker, Kidnapping, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Protective Peter Parker, Protective Tony Stark, Sleep Deprivation, Worried Tony Stark, defenestration of canon as usual, it takes him a while to get one though oops, it's my birthday and i'll gift y'all a fic if I want to, reverse birthday fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:34:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26691514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blondsak/pseuds/blondsak
Summary: “Gotta keep your eyes open, Pete. Remember?” Tony pleads as soon as Peter startles himself back to wakefulness, somehow still standing up. He looks around with bloodshot eyes, only to moan in frustration and clutch at his hair when he belatedly recalls where they are, the nightmare they're living. He doesn’t remember Tony telling him to keep his eyes open before, but the distress in his tone is all too familiar.He’s wonders how much longer it’ll be before he doesn’t catch himself in time.How much longer until he all but pulls the gun’s trigger with his own hand and sends a bullet through Tony’s skull.
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 125
Kudos: 432





	Fate (Up Against Your Will)

_My head hurts._

It’s the first thought Peter has, before anything else.

 _What happened?_ is the second one, Peter blinking open his eyes only to shut them tight again with a groan when bright light floods his vision. His arms are hanging above his head, and he tries to pull them down only to feel something hard and cold wrapped tightly around his wrists yank back. 

_Shit,_ he thinks. _Captured or kidnapped… again._

_Great._

Without moving again—just in case whoever has him hasn’t noticed he’s awake yet—Peter tries to take stock of himself. He’s hanging from some kind of metal cuffs, which, _ow._ But he can feel his sneakered feet dragging on the floor, which means he’s not in his suit… which probably means whatever went down that landed him here has to do with his connection to Tony, rather than his secret identity. 

Or so he hopes, because anyone who left him to wake up in this state is probably not a Friend of Spider-Man. 

Eyes still closed, he tries to remember what he was doing last, but his head aches badly and it’s hard to concentrate. He thinks he was on his way to the tower… wait yes, that was it! And then he saw someone—a young woman, he thinks—in an alley getting mugged, and jogged over only for her and her attacker to… disappear into thin air?

But no, that must have been his brain messing with him, because people don’t just disappear like that right before your eyes. Right?

_Right._

In any case shortly after he’d _thought_ he saw the woman and mugger disappear, he’d felt a prick in his neck only to pull out a dart and then… he woke up here.

So, kidnapped.

_Great._

It’s then he registers muffled grunting, and even without the assistance of an accompanying voice he knows exactly who it is. He can’t help opening his eyes at the realization, and sure enough, there’s Tony. 

The man is sitting upright in what looks like an old-style electric chair, each arm and ankle pinned down by metal clasps with another wrapped around his forehead, keeping him firmly in place. He has some sort of gag in his mouth, with duct tape over it. He also has an IV stand next to him with a large bag of clear liquid, a line feeding into the crook of his elbow. One glance at his chest and wrist tell Peter that all his tech has been taken, same as Peter’s own missing watch.

Tony’s staring at Peter with concern in his eyes, trying to say something through the gag, and while it’s too muffled for him to understand it entirely, he can tell by the cadence and tone what the man is asking.

“I’m okay, Mr. Stark,” he says, though the wince at the sound of his own voice has Tony’s eyes narrowing. _You are such a bad liar, kid._

“Fine, okay,” Peter says with an eye roll, “got a headache, but otherwise I’m fine, I swear. Well, and my wrists kinda ache, but I’m okay, really.” 

Ignoring Tony for a moment, he looks around the room. The walls, floor and ceiling are all a bright white except for a painted dark gray square directly under Peter’s feet, a few bottles of water in one corner and an empty plastic bucket in another. Besides Tony in his chair and Peter hanging from the ceiling there’s not much else in the room except for what must be fifty or more cameras affixed to the walls, zooming around in every direction. Peter wonders why whoever took the two of them needs so many different vantage points, then when no obvious answer presents itself, sets the question aside for later.

Finally, in the corner to Peter’s front left is a digital screen that reads 72:00:00. 

“Well, that’s not ominous,” he says sarcastically, then when Tony raises his eyebrows in question, “there’s a giant clock behind you that reads seventy-two hours.”

Tony just rolls his eyes dramatically before saying something that even through the gag sounds suspiciously like, _how original._

Peter chuckles at the remark only for his grin to fall when he notices the first thing he patently _does not like_ about this situation—well, besides the whole kidnapping, bound, and gagged parts. Directly behind Tony’s head and aimed at the back of it is a shotgun on a pedestal, with some sort of pulley system affixed to the trigger.

Tony must catch the change in expression because he’s quick to ask through the gag, _what’s wrong?_

“There’s a gun pointed at the back of your head,” Peter says quietly, not surprised when Tony rolls his eyes again—knowing it’s for Peter’s benefit that he’s being so blasé. 

Then again, it _is_ Tony. The man’s been kidnapped like, a dozen or more times, some of them when he was just a little kid. The casual attitude really might not be just a front.

Two things happen just then, at the exact same moment. First, the digital clock starts counting down. Second, the cuffs around his wrists release, Peter nearly stumbling when his feet take his full weight unexpectedly. He manages to steady himself without falling over, looking around for just a few moments to make sure nobody has come in before stepping forward toward Tony when–

“I wouldn’t move from that square if I were you, Mr. Parker,” a disembodied voice says.

Peter freezes, looking down to see that his right foot was about to step over the edge of the gray square painted on the ground below. He looks back up at Tony before pulling his leg back carefully and standing tall. “Who are you? What do you want with us?”

“You are in no position to ask questions, Mr. Parker,” the voice—a man, Peter is certain—says with a chuckle. “So I’m going to do the talking. We’ll keep this short and sweet, shall we? Who I am doesn’t matter. All that _does_ matter is that I have a bone to pick with Tony Stark”— _join the club,_ Peter hears Tony mutter— “and my surveillance has shown that _you,_ Mr. Parker, happen to be his very favorite employee.”

Peter’s eyebrows scrunch. _Employee?_ he mouths at Tony. 

The man shrugs. _Internship._

Peter looks back up at the ceiling. “You do realize I don’t even get paid, right? Hard to argue I’m Mr. Stark’s favorite _anything_ when he’s so stingy.”

He almost laughs at the way Tony narrows his eyes— _don’t push your luck, Parker_ —but before he can, what was already a rather crappy way to spend his afternoon gets much worse.

“I don’t know about that, Mr. Parker. After all, Stark certainly didn’t cut any corners when he built you that multi-million dollar suit.”

It’s like all the air is sucked out of the room, Peter feeling his face drain of color as his entire body tenses. 

Whoever this guy is, he _knows._ Which means he might want Peter for something specifically, and god, he could go after May, or MJ, or Ned, and anyone else Peter cares about or has connections to, and crap, crap, _crap–_

Tony makes another unintelligible noise to get his attention. It takes a few moments but finally Peter manages to focus on him, only for the man to stare unblinking as he nods once slowly. _It’s going to be okay._

Peter takes a few deep breaths, forcing his panic down before he nods shakily back. _I know._

“Now, where were we? Oh yes, you being his _favorite_ employee,” the man says. “I won’t bore you with details—and god knows you never cared to listen to what I had to say in the first place, did you Tony?—but let’s just say that you got what I never had and always wanted, Mr. Parker. But don’t worry, unlike your beloved _Mr. Stark,_ I’m a fair man. It’s not your fault he treated me and a bunch of my colleagues like shit, not to mention stole my life’s work. Which is why I can assure you that you will come to no harm while you are my guest. Stark however, well… that’s another matter. But again, I’m a fair man, so what happens to him won’t be up to me. It will, in fact, be entirely up to you.”

Peter locks eyes with Tony. “What the hell does that–”

“See that digital clock that started counting down exactly two minutes and thirteen seconds ago? That’s how long you need to stay standing in that square, Mr. Parker.”

Peter looks down at the tiny painted boundary lines—not more than three feet across in every direction—and his eyes go wide at the implications. “Seventy-two hours?! But that’s, that’s–”

“Three full days,” the mysterious voice interjects, “and if you so much as step a toe out or even try to sit down, the motion sensors I’ve installed in the walls at precise points will pick up on it and, well. I have a feeling you can guess what will happen next.”

Peter glances up sharply in Tony’s direction, eyeing the gun. “But I can’t—I can’t stay awake standing up like this for three whole days! That’s–”

“Not my problem,” the man says with no small amount of glee. “But like I said, I’m a fair person. I did my research. While I admit it won’t be easy, it _is_ possible—at least for a normal human. Now, someone with Spider-Man’s metabolism, who likely expends far more energy much faster? Well, I suppose it’ll make for a good experiment. I am a scientist first and foremost, after all.”

“You’re insane, is what you are!” Peter yells at the ceiling, not adding that he’s thinking the exact same thing that the man just said. Since he became Spider-Man he hasn’t been able to stay up past twenty hours even once. The thought of trying to make it over _eighty_ in total is inconceivable.

There’s silence for a few seconds before the man’s voice returns, more terse now.

“Three days, Mr. Parker. Make it to the end without leaving that square and the motion sensors will automatically shut off, and you and Stark will be free to walk out of here. Don’t make it, and you’ll still get to walk out, although I doubt Stark will be in any shape to join you.”

“Why are you doing this?” Peter cries out. “If you want to make Mr. Stark suffer so badly, why not just beat me up or, I don’t know, torture me?”

What can I say? I’m a sucker for melodrama.” A pause. “Time for me to take my bow. But don’t worry, I’ve scheduled a few surprises for both of you.” Before Peter can ask what exactly _that_ means, the man continues, “You’re a nice kid, Pete. I hope you believe me when I say that I wish you all the best in your future endeavors. And Stark? I hope _you_ believe me when I say that I wish you a fun few days watching your mentee try in vain to save you before either his mind or body gives out on him. Assuming he even makes it past day one.” Another pause. “Goodbye, gentlemen.”

* * *

Peter spends the next hour calling out various questions and taunts at the ceiling while Tony stares at the ground, clearly trying to think of a quick way out of their predicament. In between all the shouting and name-calling, Peter steals glances at his mentor.

But the man never replies, and Tony remains just as silent.

* * *

“What if he’s lying? He could have just been lying,” Peter says just as the countdown ticks over to 66 hours. “Maybe there aren’t any sensors. Maybe it’s all just a trick, and nothing will happen.”

Tony pauses in his efforts long enough to give Peter a look— _do you really believe that?—_ before going back to what he’s been up to the last four hours and twenty-three minutes: moving his jaw back and forth in an effort to dislodge the tape around his mouth so he can spit out the gag. So far Peter hasn’t noticed that all the work has made any difference, and he has to think Tony’s jaw is aching by now. But he supposes if nothing else it at least helps his mentor pass the time. 

It’s enough to make Peter wish he had a task of his own, besides standing absolutely still and keeping his eyes open.

He doesn’t know how long he was unconscious after being drugged, but he supposes it has to be midnight or later. Thankfully he has yet to feel even much in the way of exhaustion—used to staying up into the early morning hours either patrolling or playing video games with Ned, at least on the weekends. 

What he _is_ feeling however is hunger, and really, that’s a larger concern than fatigue at this point. Since the bite he hadn’t gone more than six hours without eating when awake, and now it’s been at least half a day—or however long since his rather unsatisfying school lunch. He’s already lamenting he didn’t finish his meatloaf, despite how grossly overcooked and unappealing it had tasted at the time.

Meanwhile Tony keeps working on the tape with his eyes closed, only looking up once when Peter’s stomach loudly grumbles.

“I’m good,” Peter says when he sees the concern in the man’s gaze.

 _Sure you are,_ Tony silently replies with narrowed eyes, before going back to working his jaw back and forth.

* * *

“They have to know we’re missing by now, right? May and Pepper?” Peter asks when they’re down to sixty-one hours and seven minutes left—suppressing a giant yawn that climbs up his throat alongside the tail end of the question. He can feel his eyelids getting droopy, and he blinks hard a few times, trying to push the oppressive ache right behind his forehead away. “They’ll know and then they’ll get Happy and Rhodey and the police and maybe even SHIELD or the Rogue Avengers on the case. And between all of them, they’ll find us soon for sure.”

Tony grunts in response, tone too neutral to be classified as either optimistic or pessimistic regarding Peter’s prediction. For now he’s quit trying to get the tape off, instead alternating between trying to rock the bolted-down chair back and forth in an effort to dislodge it so he can tip it over—thus getting out of the trajectory of the bullet—and messing around with trying to break or undo the metal clasps around his wrists and ankles. Peter was surprised the man hadn’t tried dislocating one of his thumbs yet, but considering how the metal hugged Tony’s wrists snugly, figured he had come to the same conclusion Peter had—that it would take more than injuring a mere thumb to get his arms free. Nothing short of smashing his hands to bloody pulps would make them malleable enough to slip through.

“Yeah, they’ll find us soon,” Peter says, more to himself than to Tony this time. He watches with tired eyes as Tony keeps struggling at his iron bonds fruitlessly. “Any moment now, they’ll be here.”

* * *

At fifty-two hours and forty-seven minutes Peter drinks one of his bottles of water in three large gulps.

At forty-six hours and thirty-four minutes he makes Tony shut his eyes and loudly hum a tune while Peter turns around and pees into the empty plastic bucket in his square.

He should probably feel more embarrassed about the whole ordeal but he’s too tired and hungry to care.

* * *

Everything changes when the countdown hits forty hours. 

By now Peter’s been standing for over a full day, and awake for going on forty-two hours straight. His feet, legs and hips ache terribly, but not as bad as the constant pounding in his head and the gnawing of his gut. 

Even the softest noises in the room—his and Tony’s heartbeats, their breaths, Tony’s grunts and hums—sound about a hundred times louder than what he’s become accustomed to since he was bitten. It’s nearly to the point of being unbearable, and he wants nothing more than to claw his eardrums out. But the pain is also helping him stay awake, which even in his complete exhaustion he recognizes is actually a help and not a hindrance.

For his part Tony does nothing anymore but watch him closely, eyes bleeding concern even as they turn bloodshot from fatigue. He’s quit working on escaping from the chair, seemingly focused only on making sure Peter stays awake. It’s a good thing, too, as in the middle of alphabetically listing off every country along with its capital, Peter suddenly startles when Tony screams his name through the gag.

“Wha?” he mumbles, opening his eyes wide—realizing he’d lost some time, if only a split second. 

_Fuck._ He must have accidentally fallen asleep.

“Sorry, m’sorry,” he says, knuckling his eyes before patting his cheeks hard and then jumping up and down in place a few times in an effort to get his blood pumping. “Shit, _shit._ Sorry.”

 _It’s okay_ , Tony says, or at least that’s what Peter assumes he said—it’s getting harder and harder to decipher exactly what his mentor is trying to communicate the longer they’re there. 

He closes his eyes, rubbing at them again, only for an entirely new and painfully familiar voice to say, “What’s going on here, bud?”

Peter tenses, slowly twisting around to where the voice had come from. He expects it to just be his imagination playing tricks on him, but there—right there is–

“Uncle Ben?” he breathes out, barely a whisper.

“Hey Petey,” Ben replies with a lopsided smile. He’s standing across the room, in the same dark navy shirt and light tan jacket he’d been wearing the night he died. “You don’t look like you’re doing too good there, kiddo.”

Distantly Peter can hear the sounds of Tony trying to get his attention, but he can’t bring himself to listen, can’t even glance Tony’s way. Because that would mean looking away from Ben, and Peter can’t do that, not yet.

“Why don’t we go home, huh?” Ben continues, and Peter watches dumbly, his entire body trembling as his very much _dead_ uncle walks up to the square—up to Peter—and stops when he’s just a few feet away. “I bet May misses you. We can go home, order in Thai, watch _Ghostbusters_ all together on the couch like we used to. What do you say?”

He holds out a hand then, Peter staring at the open palm—his own arm starting to lift inch by inch of its own accord. In the back of his mind he knows he isn’t supposed to reach his arm too far, but the only thing piercing the fog right now are thoughts about how he misses Ben, he misses Ben _so much_ , and now he’s right here, he’s right _here_ and Peter wants to cry into his shoulder, he wants to hug him to his chest, he wants to–

“Peter! Goddamnit, look at me!”

Peter jumps, outstretched arm freezing just half an inch from the invisible barrier. Slowly he forces himself to look over at Tony.

Tony, who has somehow managed to get the duct tape peeled off one cheek and the gag—a disgusting-looking rag, by the looks of it—out of his mouth.

“That’s not Ben, Pete. It’s not your uncle,” Tony says with a cough, then nodding forcefully in Ben’s direction, adds, “Look closer. The edges—they’re flickering. It’s some sort of holographic illusion, probably a cheap knock-off of my BARF tech that I showed you in the lab last month. Just look closely, and you’ll see.”

Peter continues to stare at him for a few seconds, brain slowly processing the man’s words. Then, just as slowly, he turns back to where Ben is standing, arm still extended—the soft, kind smile that Peter remembers so well plastered on his face. 

With a deep breath Peter forces himself to do as told and looks at the edge of Ben’s jacket, blinking a few times to make sure he’s not seeing things. Sure enough, there’s an occasional flicker, almost like static on a television, but only noticeable when you’re looking for it.

“He’s—he’s not real then?” Peter whispers, then more firmly, looking back at Tony, “He’s not real.”

Tony shakes his head. “Not real. Just a copy, and a _shit_ one at that.” He scowls, before schooling his features again. “But no, that’s not your uncle, underoos. I promise.”

In the corner of his eye Peter sees the entire image flicker, but by the time he twists his head to look properly Ben is gone, like he was never there in the first place. He wasn’t ever there, Peter knows, but the knowledge doesn’t make him feel any less left behind.

Afterward, he’s grateful that Tony remains silent for the few minutes it takes him to stop crying.

* * *

Once Peter’s composed himself, Tony being able to actually speak quickly turns into something quite welcome, helping the next chunk of hours pass by almost pleasantly compared to the ones before Uncle Ben had appeared. The man doesn’t stop talking, regaling Peter with whatever story from his past comes into his head. He tells Peter about how he had only met Happy after the man had pulled him from the wreckage of his burning vehicle following a car crash, and how Happy had ripped up the reward check Tony had offered him—asking for a job instead. He tells Peter about his college days, and how he’d thought Rhodey quite stuck up until the man’s kid sister Jeannie visited and set Tony straight with a few colorful stories of her own. He even tells Peter about some of the pompous crap he made Pepper do back before they fell in love, when she was his put-upon assistant and he was her playboy boss.

“Are you sure she doesn’t have amnesia, considering she agreed to marry you?” Peter mumbles at the end of one particularly harrowing tale, and despite the fact it’s a super lame joke, Tony still laughs like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard. 

At around twenty-nine hours left on the clock Peter’s leg muscles start to shake violently, nausea from lack of food also setting in, and he doesn’t even think about the risks of leaning over for too long and setting off the motion sensors when Tony instructs him to drink more water and then put his hands on his knees to give them—not to mention his aching back—some relief. 

Eventually even Tony’s numerous past exploits aren’t enough to tether Peter to the waking world, and so the man starts teaching Peter the digits of Pi past the first one hundred he already knows by heart. He lists them out in groups of ten and then forces Peter to repeat them back until he gets the order correct—belting out ABBA songs whenever Peter gets close to passing out, which Peter thinks is often even if he can’t remember them all.

They make it to the 473rd digit before May appears.

* * *

She’s badly injured, is the first thing Peter notices—long, deep cuts along her bare arms and breast that drip blood down to her fingers and sully the turquoise of her favorite blouse, another dark rivulet trailing down her chin from the corner of her mouth.

“May? May!” Peter pleads as she limps up to him, having stumbled in through the room’s lone door in the corner opposite the clock. “What happened? Who did this?”

“That man, Peter,” May says, and her voice sounds wrecked, like she gargled broken glass. “That man who trapped you here, he came to the apartment, and he, he hurt me, he–”

She chokes on the blood in her throat and falls to the ground, nearly taking Peter down with her in his haste to stay at her level—only the dim memory of Ben flickering out stopping him from reaching for her. Tony is calling his name in the distance, screaming it even, but Peter is far beyond being able to listen. 

How can he when May is here, hurt and maybe even dying, and all because of him? Because he decided he needed to play superhero and forever put at risk the lives of everyone he loves in the process?

“I’m so sorry, May,” Peter says, and only when he tastes bitter salt on his tongue does he realize he’s crying again, just as he had with Ben. “I’m sorry!”

“Your fault, Peter,” she says, closing her eyes, unmoving. “It's your fault.”

Peter vomits the little bit of water he'd drank when she stops breathing. He calls her name over and over, but still she doesn't move. 

“My fault, my fault,” he brokenly repeats, wishing the ground would swallow him whole—would take him instead and leave her here, safe and alive. But it doesn't seem he gets a choice in the matter, and anyway—he still has to protect Tony. Wiping at the mess on his chin with his sleeve he closes his eyes, wearily lifting himself up again until he’s standing once more. When he opens them, it's to an empty floor. 

Peter looks around frantically, before his gaze lands on Tony, who is watching him silently, his own eyes suspiciously wet.

“It was another illusion,” he croaks. “Not real, right?”

Tony nods slowly, clearing his dry throat before he speaks. “Right, kid. Not real. But… I couldn't see it. I think she was just in your head.”

Peter slowly blinks at him, his syrupy thoughts computing the man’s words one syllable at a time. When it finally clicks he starts to laugh—deep, booming guffaws that he can't seem to stop. So he's hallucinating now—awesome! And it's his worst nightmares—even better!

“Don't crack on me now, Pete,” Tony implores. “I need you, okay? I can't do this alone.”

Peter abruptly sobers, frowning. “I know.”

What he doesn't say is that he's pretty sure he's already cracked.

* * *

Time gets increasingly slippery. Tony continues his efforts to teach Peter Pi, only to eventually give up when Peter can't recall more than four digits in a row. Next he forces Peter to sing, and the two of them belt out no less than twenty-seven AC/DC songs before Peter can't continue due to lack of energy, his chest hitching hard with the effort.

From there Tony has them move on to math problems, first basic calculus but eventually winding down to algebra and far too soon nothing but addition and subtraction when it becomes clear Peter can no longer follow along with even the most basic polynomials—completely captivated by MJ sitting at a desk in the corner, drawing in a notebook.

“What?” she says when she catches him staring at the paper—seeing a sketch of himself standing there with deep, dark circles under his eyes. “You're in crisis, aren't you? It's a perfect opportunity to work on my shading.”

“S’nice,” Peter mumbles, only to glance over at where Ned sits cross legged on the floor, pretending to work on a Lego set but really just snickering at Peter. 

“You’re so transparent, dude,” he says with a smirk, shaking his head. 

“Yeah,” Peter agrees, smiling lazily. “Guess I am.”

“You guess you're what, kid?” Tony asks.

He doesn't answer, just keeps watching MJ’s pencil glide across the page.

“What's 432 minus 367?” Tony tries.

Peter blinks and MJ’s gone. He can still hear the click of Ned’s Lego blocks off to the side though. “Fifty-five.”

“Close enough,” Tony says with a grimace.

* * *

“I told you—gotta keep your eyes open, Pete,” Tony pleads as soon as Peter startles himself back to wakefulness, moaning in frustration and clutching at his hair when he belatedly recalls where they are. He doesn’t remember Tony telling him to keep his eyes open before, but the distress in his tone is all too familiar. He’s pretty sure he’s sleeping in micro patches even when his eyes are still open, and he wonders how much longer it’ll be before he doesn’t catch himself in time and hits one of the sensors.

How much longer until he all but pulls the trigger with his own hand and sends a bullet through Tony’s skull.

Slowly he lifts his head to look up in the direction of the clock. It takes a few seconds for his eyes to focus—his vision getting blurrier with every blink—but eventually he can see it’s at twelve hours and thirty-seven minutes.

Just a half day left, and then this nightmare can end.

Peter’s not sure he can make it.

He _has_ to make it.

“Pete? You with me?”

“Yeah,” Peter whispers, then louder, looking down at his arms, “Close y’r eyes, M’sr Stark.”

Tony’s brow furrows, his own slow blinks speeding up in confusion. “What? Why?”

“’Cause ya’don’t wanna see this,” Peter replies, gripping his left wrist in his right hand.

“See what?”

“This,” Peter says, only to cry out when he squeezes his wrist as hard as his weakened fingers can muster—a scream escaping him which almost but not quite masks the double snap of his radial and ulnar bones when they finally cave in, the shards scraping against muscle and soft tissue.

“Jesus,” Tony breathes out, watching on in horror as Peter clutches his arm to his chest, doubling over and dry heaving from the pain that lights up the entire limb with every beat of his heart. “Jesus Christ.”

“I have’ta stay ‘wake,” Peter says through his tears, swallowing convulsively in an effort to stop the heaving. “This’ll help.”

“I get it, Pete,” Tony somberly replies after a few moments, sounding like he needs to gag himself. “I just hate that it’s you.”

* * *

The pain helps, at least for a few more hours. Peter’s still just as exhausted, but aware enough now to continue answering simple math problems, though Tony ditches even those when Peter gets a third guess in a row egregiously incorrect. 

Just as the clock ticks down to eight hours and Peter’s consciousness is starting to quickly fade again, the door is blasted open, Peter lifting his good arm to shield his eyes from the dust. When he lowers it, it’s to see War Machine standing there.

“Shit,” Rhodey says, then into his comm, “Pepper, I found ‘em! Northwest corner, basement floor.” He walks straight up to Peter, helmet still down. “Ready to get out of here, Pete?”

“Y-yeah,” Peter says with an exhausted smile.

They’re saved. They’re saved. It’s over.

He lifts a foot to step out of the square when–

“Peter, stop! That’s an order!”

With a long sigh Peter sets his foot back down, turning to look at Tony, who looks absolutely livid.

“Why’re you yellin’? We’re saved.”

“No, we’re not,” Tony says firmly, shaking his head. “It’s not real. Look—just look at the edges! For god’s sake, Pete, just look.”

Peter shakes his head back. “No, s’real.” He turns to Rhodey. “Tell’em y’r real.”

But Rhodey doesn’t say a word, just continues to stand there in silence, as if he didn’t even hear Peter.

“Rhodey?” Peter asks, only for War Machine to flicker in and out before disappearing altogether.

“Fuck,” Tony mutters, squeezing his eyes shut and taking deep breaths. “ _Fuck_ , that was too close.”

“M’sr Stark?”

“... Yeah, Pete. I’m here.”

“I can’t…” Peter starts to sway.

“ _Shit_. Shit, uh, okay kid, listen to me—take your left wrist and squeeze it gently for me. Can you do that, Pete?”

Peter doesn’t respond verbally. He’s so tired. It feels like when Rhodey left he took the last of Peter’s dramatically depleted reserves with him.

He’s just so tired.

“Peter Benjamin, squeeze your left wrist, dammit. That’s an order!”

“’K, jeez,” Peter mumbles, doing as Tony says only to cry out when a piercing throb radiates up his arm. He gasps from the pain, feeling the fogginess in his brain get pushed back, if only a tiny bit. With watering eyes he looks back at Tony. “Thanks.”

Tony nods. “No problem kiddo. We’re almost there. Just gotta hold out a little bit longer for me.”

“A li’l bit longer,” Peter repeats, then with a smirk that showcases a confidence he doesn’t feel, adds, “No sweat. ‘M Spider-Man.”

Tony smiles—a genuine one, Peter thinks. “Damn straight.”

* * *

Later on, Peter won’t remember most of those last hours, trapped in that brightly lit hell. He supposes Tony kept talking to him, shouted at him every time his eyes closed for longer than a blink, supported him with words of encouragement—probably had him squeeze his wrist a few more times to keep the oncoming collapse at bay.

But he never remembers any of that on his own.

What he does recall is Tony asking him for the time on the clock every so often, and the whoop the man lets out when it hits under one hour.

They’re at twenty-four minutes left, Peter staring at the clock—feeling like every minute that falls away takes triple as long as it should.

One second he’s glancing at Tony, listening to the man tell some stupid joke about a pig in a dress—the next, he opens his eyes to the room no longer bathed in bright fluorescence but instead swathed in comforting soft light.

The chair Tony was bound to is gone.

“M’sr Stark?” Peter asks the room.

“Hey Pete. Glad to see you awake.”

Peter twists to see Tony standing by the door. He looks much better than he did just moments before—or at least, Peter thinks it was only moments before—wearing a three-piece suit and grinning. The bags from under his eyes are gone, as is the pale pallor of his cheeks.

“M’sr Stark?” he asks again. “How’d ya–”

“You made it, kid,” Tony interrupts, lifting a hand to motion to the door. “You did it. You saved us. It’s time to go.”

“Are you—y’re sure?” Peter slurs. He knows he needs to check something— _the edges, Peter, look at the edges_ —but his eyes aren’t cooperating, no longer able to focus on such a small detail from across the room.

“C’mon Peter,” Tony says, still grinning. “Don’t keep your old man waiting, now.”

“’K,” Peter says tiredly, sighing. It still feels wrong somehow—but if Tony says it’s okay, then it must be okay. He’s about to take a step when he pauses, something niggling at the very back of his exhausted brain. “Wait… what’d ya say?”

Tony doesn’t answer him, though he does get more forceful, frowning as he says tightly, “I don’t have all day. Let’s go, Peter. Now.”

“N-no,” Peter says, shaking his head. “Y’said, you said… you called y’rself my old man. But—but you never say that. ‘Cause y’know how much… how much Dad’n’Ben meant t’me. You _never_ joke ‘bout that.”

“Peter,” Tony repeats, voice hardening. “Get over here. That’s an order.”

Purely out of instinct Peter nearly steps a foot closer—having heard Tony give forceful orders for endless hours upon hours now, all to keep the both of them safe. But he manages to hold firm, feeling certain in this, if nothing else.

“No. Y’r not him. Y’r _not_ him.”

Peter’s rewarded when the entire room flickers in and out, the soft light and suited Tony seemingly superimposed over the more familiar bright lights and exhausted, desperate expression of his trapped mentor.

After a few seconds it flickers out entirely, Peter taking in a deep breath before turning back to where Tony—the real Tony—is smiling at him, eyes red and full of tears.

“Kid, I am so _damn_ proud of you.”

Peter tries to smile back but it comes out more of a tired grimace. “Knew it w’sn’t you.”

“You sure did,” Tony says, sniffling. Then, more sober, “What’s the time on the clock?”

Peter glances up. “Tw’nty-one minutes… f’rteen seconds.”

“That’s nothing,” Tony replies, then grinning again, “So what do you want your first meal after you get some rest to be? Cheeseburger? I’m thinking cheeseburgers.”

* * *

Nothing obvious changes when the countdown hits zero. Peter is pretty sure he missed when it even happened. One moment he was telling Tony it was at a little over three minutes, and seemingly the next Tony was asking once again what it read and there was nothing but red digital zeroes across the screen.

“It’s done,” Peter says simply, too tired to even sound relieved. “S’over.”

He doesn’t move at first, hardly able to believe it’s true. He feels like he’s been stuck in this room forever.

“Alright kid—get over here and open one of these arm bands for me.”

“Y’r sure?” Peter asks—the last functioning part of his mind feeling worry rub against it at the thought of leaving the square. All his brain associates the act with anymore is Tony dying.

“Only one way to find out, Pete,” Tony says. “Either way, you’re not gonna make it much longer.”

“Yeah,” Peter numbly agrees, focusing now on where his right foot is toeing the edge of the square. “Here goes nothin’.”

With a hop he steps out, only to freeze. But nothing happens. The gun doesn’t go off.

Whoever the guy who took them and arranged all this was, he at least seems to be a man of his word. Or maybe he really didn’t believe Peter could pull it off, and didn’t think he had to bother with a failsafe.

Whatever the case, Peter doesn’t care. All he cares about is getting horizontal as soon as physically possible. But first, Tony.

With a sigh Peter stumbles over to the chair—using his good hand to fumble at one of the arm clasps until it pops open. Tony takes over from there, wasting no time getting the others undone before standing up and stretching with a giant yawn. “Oh god, does that feel good.”

“M’sr Stark?” Peter whispers.

“Yeah, underoos?”

“’M gonna–“

Peter goes boneless, Tony only just managing to cradle the kid’s torso to his chest before they both go down to the floor in a tangle of limbs.

“Whoa, Pete,” Tony breathes out, then, “Shit, kid. We gotta get you to the medbay.”

Peter doesn’t respond—feeling that their current position speaks to the fact that he’s too exhausted for even a second’s more effort. After a few beats Tony chuckles fondly, Peter feeling a hand run tenderly through his hair.

“Scratch that, you gotta sleep while I get you to the medbay. You can tap out now, underoos. I'll handle things from here.”

“Y’r safe?”

“Sure am. You saved me.”

“Saved each other,” Peter mumbles, and he’s out before he’s hardly finished speaking the words. He never hears Tony’s soft reply.

“Yeah, kid. I guess we did.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hello lovely readers. 
> 
> Today (Monday) is my birthday and that means it’s once again time for me to think about all the great things fandom has gifted me this year. It’s not an exaggeration to say that this year would have been a lot rougher for me in many aspects had I not had the support and friendship of so many in irondad. Part of why I wrote this specific fic for my birthday piece was because I wanted to share a story which reflected just how loved I feel by the fandom and the friends I’ve found here. Similar to how Tony encourages and supports and looks out for Peter while he’s struggling to get through this ordeal—not to mention how Peter protects Tony and reminds him at the end that they saved each other—a lot of you have been there for me both personally and as a writer, as I hope I’ve been there for many of you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you to each and every one of you—you know who you are. And on a larger scale, thank you to everyone who has read and left kudos and/or comments on any of my fics this year. It has really meant the world to me, and will continue to for as long as I’m in the fandom and beyond.
> 
> Lots of love and gratitude to you all,  
> [blondsak](https://blondsak.tumblr.com)


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